Free Fall (27 page)

Ten steps past the nurse’s station and a rolling cart with lunch trays, he reached Stella’s door as the doctor walked out.

“She is a lucky woman,” the doctor said in broken English before moving on to the next patient.

Right now, he felt like the lucky one.

Jose pushed open her door and God, she was beautiful. But so damn pale her freckles stood out all the more. At least the heart monitor beeped a steady reassurance, even if the bandages on her head and her leg struck a fresh bolt of fear through him.

“Stella, what the hell were you doing out there?” Shit, that wasn’t what he’d meant to say.

But she didn’t bristle. She simply rolled her eyes at him, understanding too well, probably more than he deserved. He charged across the room and kissed her forehead, taking in the warmth of her. Alive. Thank God, alive.

Her fingers stroked the back of his neck. “I was doing my job. Which included saving your ass.”

“You’re a code breaker. A data techie. That’s your job.” He angled back, looking into her glittering green eyes that reminded him of the dewy morning grass of home. “Leave that shoot-out stuff for us security dudes.”

“But I knew something was off when Brown told everyone to go west and he went the other way.” She frowned at the memory, her well-ordered brain always ready to catch a piece of a puzzle that didn’t fit. That was one of many reasons she was so damn good at her job.

“You found the mole and kept sensitive information safe. I would wholeheartedly approve if you hadn’t gotten shot in the process.” The kick to his gut was so damn sharp it was like seeing it happen all over again. “You took doing your job to a whole new level.”

Her hand slid around to caress his unshaven cheek. “My job is to love you, Jose James. That’s the only thing I care about. But you know I’ve spoken before about focusing my work life on code breaking, the desk type, out of the field.”

She was making this too easy for him, which also made it tougher because he wanted to earn her, to be worthy of this amazing woman who’d given him her entire heart.

“Loving you is the scariest damn thing I’ve ever done, Stella.” He kissed her forehead again, then her freckled nose, her mouth, quickly, carefully. “And I do, I love you… so much.”

That point had been hammered home to him in the month he’d spent without her. He’d known then that he wasn’t ready to let her go. But this last week together had been the pressure cooker that stripped everything else away—all his dumb defenses and all his half-baked notions about what he wanted for his future. The only thing that was left was his love for Stella and faith in her. Hell, if this smart, kick-ass woman saw him as a stand-up guy who could take on a family, then by God he could.

“I’m glad to hear it.” She stroked her thumb over his mouth. “I wondered if I was hallucinating when I heard you say that last night.”

No more wasting time. No more running. He was ready to take on the future, with Stella. “Let’s get married.”

She looked at her IV bag quickly, then back at him. “Did I hear you say what I think or are the pain meds messing with my head?”

“Stella, I mean every word. I want us to get married and if you’re not ready to talk about that now, I’ll wait until you’re feeling better. Hell, I’ll wait however long it takes because I’m not giving up on us again.”

“What about your concerns? You have some very real worries and while I believe in you, I don’t take those lightly.” Wary hope flickered through her eyes and he hated that she had to wonder or doubt him.

He lowered the bed rail and sat beside her, cautiously so as not to jostle her. He checked the half-empty bag of fluid and the machine blipping her vitals. Satisfied she was okay, he settled beside her. “I want to be with you. Period. I’m fucking miserable without you.”

“So romantically spoken.” She rested her head against his shoulder, toying with the chain on his dog tags until they slid free from under his T-shirt.

“But from the heart. And actually, it’s the logical, practical truth, just the way you like it.” He clasped her hand and pressed it against his chest right over his pulse pounding for her. “When I’m with you, I don’t fear the future anymore. I want it all, as long as we’re together.”

She started to answer but he needed to tell her everything. He wanted her to understand how much peace she brought him.

“Before you say anything, I’m willing to revisit the issue of kids.”

Her eyes went wide with shock, and she wasn’t blinking anything, much less Morse code. “I’m listening.”

This part was still tough for him to wrap his brain around, but it was getting easier. And he had faith now that he could be a part of a healthy relationship, with Stella. “I would just ask that we wait to have children until I’m out of the field so there would be less pressure on… our family.”

Was it wishful thinking, or did some color flood back into her cheeks? She looked so damn happy she practically glowed.

“That sounds good, really good.” Her fingers caressed along his heart, grasping a handful of his shirt. “After what I’ve been through with my mother, you won’t hear any argument from me on that part. Are you sure, though? I don’t want you to make spur-of-the-moment promises because of what happened last night.”

“It’s not spur-of-the-moment. It’s been a slow and steady build to the realization that I’m not my mother or my sister. I’ve been through the worst stress imaginable in the last month and a half, and I haven’t thought of taking a drink.” He rubbed his cheek gently against the top of her head on the uninjured side. “I’ve only thought of you and how to make you happy.”

“You do make me happy, Jose.” She looked up at him, and he knew he wanted to stare into those eyes forever. “And I have total faith in you.”

“Besides, any leftover doubts I had got kicked in the ass yesterday. This has been the kind of time that makes a person reevaluate life. I want to spend mine with you. You’re going to be an amazing mother someday and I want to be a good dad.”

“We’re going to make it work, Jose. Forever.” She tugged his dog tags, bringing him closer for a kiss to seal the deal.

Sealing their future together.

And making him the happiest flipping man in the world, because he wasn’t letting her go.

Aswan, Egypt—Six Months Later

When Stella Carson was eight years old, she made a scrapbook from magazine photos, collaging the “perfect family” and a monstrously big wedding. Reality was a thousand times better than any of her childhood fantasies.

Never in a million dreams could she have envisioned getting married on a sailboat, anchored in a scenic cove along the Nile River. Best of all, her mother stood with her below deck in a tiny cabin, pinning white jasmine blossoms in her daughter’s long, loose hair. Stella watched in the oval mirror, Annie’s face reflected beside hers like a picture in that long ago dream album.

Her mother smiled. “You look beautiful, sweetheart.”

“Thanks, I’m just so very happy to have gotten this right, to have been this lucky.”

Peace flowed through her without even a hint of pre-wedding jitters. She and Jose were meant to be together and today was the fulfillment of the first time she’d seen him emerge from the Gulf of Aden.

After their mission in Africa had wrapped up, she’d taken a leave of absence from her job with Interpol to spend time with Jose in Georgia where he was stationed at Moody Air Force Base. She’d struggled at first with what to do with her life and took a job at a local college to pay bills, only to find she enjoyed the hell out of the intellectual challenge. Life was funny sometimes in the way she found her best answers in the surprises.

Like her unexpected meeting of her Mr. Right the day Jose had pulled himself up into her boat and changed her world forever.

Stella passed another flower and bobby pin over her shoulder. “I’m glad you and Sam could be here with us today.”

The couple would serve as their only witnesses, Sam and Annie having eloped five months ago.

Annie clipped the final bloom in place. “I wish I could have been there for so many other important moments in your life.”

“You’re here now.” Stella clasped her mother’s hand over her shoulder and turned to face her.

Annie’s face radiated contentment, her restlessness having finally eased. “Ajaya has given me a do-over of sorts.”

Sam and Annie had sponsored his immigration to the United States and served as his legal guardians. He’d been placed in a boarding school for teens with troubled pasts, but he would spend all holidays with Annie and Sam.

“And now I have another brother.” Her biological brothers were slower in warming up to their returned-from-the-dead mother, but time and patience seemed to be easing the path.

Life was too short to waste on anger. Too easily they could have all died six months ago. Thank God the guilty had been brought to justice.

Mr. Brown—Henry Pope—had been arrested and was currently standing trial for treason. Yet, he’d never once spoken about his crimes or given evidence. At one point he’d been placed on suicide watch, but never tried to end his life—unlike the teacher Mr. Gueye who’d hung himself rather than face justice for selling his students. Profilers could only deduce that Pope had chosen to live for his daughter, who was being brought up by her mother’s sister.

The warlord responsible had been traced through the bio toxin, a formula so specific it might as well have left a signature. He’d been taken out by his own troops before he could be arrested. And another warlord stepped into the power vacuum. It seemed a never-ending battle, but with defenseless boys and girls lives in the balance here? Turning away just wasn’t an option.

Music drifted through the open hatch, a lute and harp lightly calling her to shake off the thoughts of work for now. The time had come to join her life with Jose’s.

Annie picked up the lotus bouquet and offered it to Stella. “Are you ready?”

“Absolutely,” she answered without hesitation.

“He’s a great guy.”

“You don’t have to convince me.” Stella laughed lightly. “I’ve known he was the one since the first time I saw him.”

Clasping the fragrant flowers, Stella started up the steps and into the shining sunlight. The rippling breeze teased her simple eyelet cotton gown around her ankles. Date trees and palms rustled along the bank, reminding her of another time here with Jose.

And the love of her life stood waiting on deck beside a military priest. The sight of Jose, tall and steady in his uniform, made the breath catch in her chest. The sunlight glistened along his jet-black hair, the familiar angles of his handsome face so dear to her. She’d found her family, found her home in Jose.

He held out a hand to her and she joined him, his touch familiar, stirring. He squeezed her hand, the love in his eyes speaking as tangibly as words. Her smile answered him right back before she turned to the military chaplain as her mother moved to stand by Sam, hooking her arm with his.

Stella held hands with Jose, the sailboat rocking gently by the Nile River. His voice rumbled low and firm as he spoke his vows with a firm conviction that tingled through her. And then it was her turn.

“I, Stella, take you, Jose, to be my husband…”

She and Jose had decided to keep the wedding simple and celebrate later with a larger party in the States. Today, this moment, was just about the two of them, affirming their love and their future by each placing a simple gold band on the other’s ring finger.

“…to have and to hold, from this day forward.”

Thanks to Jose and his fearless rescue, she was alive to enjoy that future.

“For better or worse…”

They’d been through so much and survived so much already this past year, coming through it all stronger. Life wouldn’t always be easy, but together? They were rock solid.

Stella continued, “For richer or poorer. In sickness and in health.”

She’d started attending Al-Anon meetings, arming herself with the knowledge to better understand his recovery and the challenges they could face. And each day made her all the more certain she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, as his wife.

“…to love and to cherish from this day forward, ’til death do us part.”

And before the chaplain could even finish with his official blessing, Stella arched up to kiss her husband. Warm anticipation curled deliciously through her veins, along with love. So much love.

She’d been wrong about one thing that day they’d met. She’d thought the timing was off. But she’d fallen for the right man at the right time, and looked forward to falling for him all over again every day for the rest of their lives.

If you enjoy sizzling thrill rides of action and attraction, check out the pulse-pounding romance in the rest of Catherine Mann’s Elite Force series.

Read on for excerpts from:

COVER ME

HOT ZONE

UNDER FIRE

Available now from

Sourcebooks Casablanca

It was a cold day in hell for Tech Sergeant Wade Rocha—standard ops for a mission in Alaska.

He slammed the side of the icy crevasse on Mount McKinley. A seemingly bottomless crevasse. That made it all the more pressing to anchor his ax again ASAP. Except both of his spikes clanked against his sides while the underworld waited in an alabaster swirl of nothingness as he pinwheeled on a lone cable.

Wade scratched and clawed with his gloved hands, kicked with his spiked shoes, reaching for anything. The tiniest of toeholds on the slick surface would be good right about now. Sure he was roped to his climbing partner. But they had the added load of an injured woman strapped to a stretcher beneath them. He needed to carry his own weight.

Chunks of ice and snow pelted his helmet. The unstable gorge walls vibrated under his gloved hands.

“Breathe and relax, buddy.” His headset buzzed with reassurance from his climbing partner, Hugh “Slow Hand” Franco.

Right.

Hold tight.

Think.

Focus narrowed, Wade tightened his grip on his rope. He’d earned his nickname, Brick, by being the most hardheaded guy in their rescue squadron. Come hell or high water, he never gave up.

Each steady breath crackled with ice shards in his lungs, but his oxygen-starved body welcomed every atom of air. Lightning fast, he grabbed the line tying them together and worked the belay device.

Whirrr, whippp.
The rope zinged through. Wade slipped closer, closer still, to Franco, ten feet below.

“Oof.” He jerked to a halt.

“I got ya, Brick. I got ya,” Franco chanted through the headset. Intense. Edgy. Nothing was out of bounds. Franco would die before he let him fall. “It’s just physics that makes this thing work. Don’t overthink it.”

And it did work. Wade stabilized against the icy wall again. Relief trickled down his spine in frosty beads of sweat.

He keyed up his microphone. “All steady, Slow Hand.”

“Good. Now do you wanna stop horsing around, pal?” Franco razzed, sarcastic as ever. “I’d like to get back before sundown. My toes are cold.”

Wade let a laugh loosen the tension kinking up his gut. “Sorry I inconvenienced you by almost dying there. I’ll try not to do it again. I’ll even spring for a pedicure, if you’re worried about your delicate feet chafing from frostbite.”

“Appreciate that.” Franco’s labored breath and hoarse chuckle filled the headset.

“Hey, Franco? Thanks for saving my ass.”

“Roger that, Brick. You’ve done the same for me.”

And he had. Not that they kept score. Wade recognized the chitchat for what it really was—Franco checking to make sure he wasn’t suffering from altitude sickness due to their fifteen thousand foot perch. They worked overtime to acclimate themselves, but the lurking beast could still strike even the most seasoned climber without warning. They’d already lost one of their team members last month to HACE—high altitude cerebral edema.

He shook his head to clear it. Damn it, his mind was wandering. Not good. He eyed the ledge a mere twenty feet up. Felt like a mile. He slammed an ice ax in with his left hand, pulled, hauled, strained, then slapped the right one in a few inches higher. Crampons—ice cleats—gained traction on the sleek side of the narrow ravine as he inched his way upward.

Slow. Steady. Patient. Mountain rescue couldn’t be rushed. At least April gave them a few more daylight hours. Not that he could see much anyway, with eighty-mile-per-hour wind creating whiteout conditions. Below, his climbing partner was a barely discernible blur.

Hand over hand. Spike. Haul. Spike. Haul. He clipped his safety rope into a spike they had anchored in the rock on the way down. Scaled one step at a time. Forgot about the biting wind. The ball-numbing cold.

The ever-present risk of avalanche.

His arms bulged, the burden strapped to his harness growing heavier.
Remember the mission. Bring up an unconscious female climber. Strapped to a litter. Compound fracture in her leg.

His job as a pararescueman in the United States Air Force included medic training. Land, sea, or mountain, military missions or civilian rescue. With his brothers in arms, he walked, talked, and breathed their motto, “That Others May Live.”

That people like his mother might live.

Muscles burning, he focused upward into the growl of the storm and the hovering military helicopter. A few more feet and he could hook the litter to the MH-60. Rotors
chop, chop, chopped
through the sheets of snow like a blender.

The crevasse was too narrow to risk lowering a swaying cable. Just one swipe against the narrow walls of ice could collapse the chasm into itself. On top of the injured climber and Franco.

On top of him.

So it was up to
him
—and his climbing partner—to pull the wounded woman out. Once clear, the helicopter would land if conditions permitted. And if not, they could use the cable then to raise her into the waiting chopper.

Wind slammed him again like a frozen Mack truck. He fought back the cold-induced mental fog. At least when Hermes went subterranean to rescue Persephone from the underworld, he had some flames to toast his toes.

Wade keyed his microphone again to talk to the helicopter orbiting overhead. “Fever”—he called the mission code name—“we’re about five minutes from the top.”

Five minutes when anything could happen.

“Copy, the wind is really howling. We will hold until you are away from the crevasse.”

“Copy, Fever.”

The rest of his team waited in the chopper. They’d spent most of the day getting a lock on the locale. The climber’s personal locator beacon had malfunctioned off and on. Wade believed in his job, in the motto. He came from five generations of military.

But sometimes on days like this, saving some reckless thrill seeker didn’t sit well when thoughts of people like his mother—wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq, needing his help—hammered him harder than the ice-covered rocks pummeling his shoulder. How damned frustrating that there hadn’t been a pararescue team near enough—he hadn’t been near enough—to give her medical aid. Now because of her traumatic brain injury, she would live out the rest of her life in a rehab center, staring off into space.

He couldn’t change the past, but by God, he would do everything he could to be there to help someone else’s mother or father, sister or brother, in combat. That could only happen if he finished up his tour in this frozen corner of the world.

As they neared the top, a moan wafted from the litter suspended below him. Stabilizing the rescue basket was dicey. Even so, the groans still caught him by surprise.

The growling chopper overhead competed with the increasing howls of pain from their patient in the basket. God forbid their passenger should decide to give them a real workout by thrashing around.

“Franco, we better get her to the top soon before the echoes cause an avalanche.”

“Picking up the pace.”

Wade anchored the last… swing… of his ax… Ice crumbled away. The edge shaved away in larger and larger chunks.
Crap, move faster
. Pulse slugging, he dug deeper.

And cleared the edge.

Franco’s exhale echoed in his ears. Or maybe it was his own. Resisting the urge to sprawl out and take five right here on the snow-packed ledge, he went on autopilot, working in tandem with Franco.

Climbing ropes whipped through their grip as they hauled the litter away from the edge. Franco handled his end with the nimble guitarist fingers that had earned him the homage of the Clapton nickname, Slow Hand. The immobilized body writhed under the foil Mylar survival blanket, groaning louder. Franco leaned over to whisper something.

Wade huffed into his mic, “Fever, we are ready for pickup. One survivor in stable condition, but coming to, fast and vocal.”

The wind-battered helicopter angled overhead, then righted, lowering, stirring up snow in an increasing storm as the MH-60 landed. Almost home free.

Wade hefted one end, trusting Franco would have the other in sync, and hustled toward the helicopter. His crampons gripped the icy ground with each pounding step. The door of the chopper filled with two familiar faces. From his team. Always there.

With a
whomp
, he slid the metal rescue basket into the waiting hands. He and Franco dove inside just as the MH-60 lifted off with a roar and a cyclone of snow. Rolling to his feet, he clamped hold of a metal hook bolted to the belly of the chopper.